Unlike
Peter Jennings, Dan Rather is able to recognize a terrorist group when he
talks to its leader. Introducing an interview he conducted a few days ago
with a Hezbollah leader, on Wednesday's CBS Evening News Rather noted:
"For more than 20 years, Lebanon-based Hezbollah has waged terrorist
war on Israel and killed hundreds of Americans as well." Rather also
reminded viewers: "Until September 11th, Hezbollah was responsible
for the largest number of Americans ever killed in a terrorist attack, 241
Marines in Lebanon in 1983."

Three weeks ago, however, as recounted in the
March 29 CyberAlert, ABC's Peter Jennings refused to endorse the idea
that Hezbollah is a terrorist group. While Jennings stated that "the
Bush administration says Hezbollah is a terrorist organization,"
Jennings relayed how Hezbollah's leader assured him that "we are
not terrorists." Jennings cast no doubt on the claim as he proceeded
to recount from Beirut, without mentioning the role of Hezbollah, how
"a man simply drove his truck to the front door" of the U.S.
embassy "and blew himself up. Sixty-three people died. Later that
year, the Marine barracks here were destroyed in much the same way, 241
Marines died." For details:http://archive.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2002/cyb20020329.asp#1

Setting up the April 17 segment Rather
explained, as taken down by MRC analyst Brad Wilmouth: "Recent
attacks on Israel's northern border by Hezbollah have threatened to spread
the current Middle East war. But this is an old problem. For more than 20
years, Lebanon-based Hezbollah has waged terrorist war on Israel and
killed hundreds of Americans as well. In Beirut this week, a Hezbollah
leader, Sheik Naim Qassem, agreed to an exclusive interview.
"We were taken under guard hidden in a car
through the back streets of this south Beirut neighborhood to the secret
headquarters of Hezbollah. Until September 11th, Hezbollah was responsible
for the largest number of Americans ever killed in a terrorist attack, 241
marines in Lebanon in 1983. Today it is a major political power in the
region."

Rather's first question: "Tell me what
Hezbollah is. Is it in any way a terrorist organization?"

Qassem claimed that Israel is terrorist as is
the U.S. because is supports Israel.

Rather observed: "Hezbollah is waging a
major publicity war against the United States. In Lebanon, it has the
political power to get its message across. Hezbollah is one-third of the
ruling political system in Lebanon. In Beirut neighborhoods, such as this,
and in many other places and especially along Lebanon's southern border
with Israel, Hezbollah is the dominant political entity. Much of the
infrastructure -- hospitals, schools, roads -- are supplied by Hezbollah."

CBS then showed a bit more of the interview,
with Rather asking: "I want to ask you about suicide bombers. Do you
agree or disagree that this is evil?" Qassem maintained being a
martyr shows "a love of life."

Rather inquired: "Why, as a Muslim, you
would not denounce the taking of innocent lives by young people who are
willing to take their own lives, it's almost impossible to understand
why you would not denounce this."

Rather offered a rationale for Hezbollah's
popularity: "Hezbollah is the self-appointed advocate for Lebanon's
nearly 400,000 Palestinians. They live in deep poverty at what are among
the most squalid refugee camps in the world. It is in their name and in
the name of the four million displaced Palestinians throughout the world,
that Hezbollah conducts its political and military campaigns."

Returning to the interview, Rather posed three
more questions:
-- "Do you accept or not Israel's right to
exist as a state?"
-- "If the Arab world as a whole comes to an
agreement that Israel has a right to exist as a nation, would Hezbollah
accept that or continue to be at war with Israel?"
-- "If the United States continues to
support Israel militarily, economically, will Hezbollah attack Americans
and America?"

Ominously, Qassem said that is something they
will decide in the future.

To
the Washington Post, President Bush's tax cut, which represented just
5.7 percent of expected federal tax collections, is "mammoth,"
but the anticipated 22 percent growth in federal pending is merely
"the biggest increase in government spending since the 1960s."

MRC analyst Ken Shepherd noticed the use of
the word "mammoth" in the first paragraph of an April 16 story
by Mike Allen about Bush's remarks the day before in Cedar Rapids, Iowa:
"President Bush began a campaign today to
win permanent status for his mammoth tax cut, which is scheduled to expire
in eight years and would cost hundreds of billions of dollars a year to
preserve."

How truly "mammoth" is the Bush tax
cut? Daniel J. Mitchell pointed out last year on the Heritage Foundation
Web site:

"-- Assuming no changes in law, tax
collections over the next ten years are projected to reach $27.9 trillion.
The proposed $1.6 trillion tax cut is only 5.7 percent of this amount.
"-- The Bush tax cut, measured as a percent
of GDP, is only about one-fourth as large as the Reagan tax cut and only
about one-half as large as the Kennedy tax cut."

The day before the Post tagged the tax cut as
"mammoth," Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler began an April
15 front page story:
"The Bush administration is poised to
complete the biggest increase in government spending since the 1960s'
'Great Society,' the result of conducting the war on terrorism while
substantially boosting the education and transportation budgets, according
to a detailed analysis of government spending patterns.
"Spending on government programs will
increase by 22 percent from 1999 to 2003 in inflation-adjusted dollars,
according to the analysis by The Washington Post and vetted by budget
experts in both parties."

Former
President Bill Clinton recognizes that Helen Thomas was one of his best
allies in the news media. At an awards ceremony on Monday, Clinton
effusively praised Thomas as the "hardest working reporter"
during his presidency. He also admired her for, as reported by
O'Dwyer's PR Daily, how "she never 'took a cheap shot' during
eight years of reporting on him nor did she ever resort to
'sanctimony' in judging him."

The O'Dwyer's PR Daily report, brought to
my attention by former MRCer Andy Szul, also noted that at the New York
Women in Communications Matrix lunch "Clinton said his second career
choice after politics was journalism. 'My hero was Walter Cronkite,'
said Clinton. 'I believed every word he said.'"

That explains a lot.

An excerpt from the April 15 O'Dwyer's PR
Daily dispatch:

Helen Thomas, who has reported on eight U.S. presidents, was the
"hardest working reporter" during his term, former President
Bill Clinton told 1,200 attendees at the New York Women in Communications
Matrix lunch in the Waldorf-Astoria April 15.

Clinton, a surprise guest who received an enthusiastic, standing
ovation when he appeared, said Thomas, now with Hearst, regularly covered
him early in the morning when he did his jogging.

She never "took a cheap shot" during eight years of reporting
on him nor did she ever resort to "sanctimony" in judging him,
he said.

"She was always trying to get to the truth and was not afraid to
ask hard questions about the Middle East and what it really takes to solve
this awful dilemma," he said, adding: "When she asked me
something, I took it very seriously."

Thomas avoided "celebrity" and knew that "the press is
supposed to report abuses of power and not contribute to them."

Clinton said his second career choice after politics was journalism.

"My hero was Walter Cronkite," said Clinton. "I believed
every word he said."...

END of Excerpt

One of her "hard questions" about
the Middle East: Thomas to Ari Fleischer on April 1: "Does the
President think that the Palestinians have a right to resist 35 years of
brutal military occupation and suppression?"

Thomas certainly returns to Clinton the
admiration he shows toward her. She won the "Bring Back Bubba Award
(for the Best Journalistic Lewinsky)" at the MRC's January 17
"Dishonor Awards: Roasting the Most Outrageously Biased Liberal
Reporters of 2001," for this bit of gushing when she introduced him
at an October 9, 2001 Greater Washington Society of Association Executives
lecture shown on C-SPAN:
"Throughout the eight years that he was in
office, President Clinton warned us that the next great menace was
international terrorism....
"He also brought unprecedented prosperity to
our nation, and because of that, President Clinton [Bush] can use the
surplus Mr. Clinton left behind to pay for many of the nation's needs in
this time of crisis....
"This lecture series is about the human
spirit. To me and millions of others, President Clinton has always
personified that. He is the man from Hope, and that is what he has given
us, hope. We miss him. Thank you, Mr. President."

Whether
you are an adult or a kid, Time magazine seems to demand the same
qualification for reporters it hires: You must be liberal. At least
that's a reasonable conclusion to draw after a 12-year-old reporter for
Time for Kids magazine conceded on the Today show that, after interviewing
the "pro-war" Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, she realized
he's more conservative than she as she "grew up in the East Village
in New York City so my ideas are very different from his."

MRC analyst
Geoffrey Dickens noticed that the April 17 Today brought aboard
Alexandra Tatarsky at the top of its third hour to discuss her
interview with Rumsfeld. After she told NBC's Ann Curry,
substituting for Katie Couric, about how nice Rumsfeld was to her
and how he answered some questions about what kids can do, she
noted how she doesn't "always agree" with his
decisions:
"I don't think there's anything that
anybody could say to completely take away me being more unshaky
and unsteady than I was before but Secretary Rumsfeld did point
out that our country has always been really stable in the past.
So, and that, even though I don't always agree with the decisions
they make it made me realize that they are really thinking about
it and thinking about it hard. And there's a lot of qualified
people doing that thinking."

Time
hires liberals from the start. Today featured a Time for
Kids reporter who thinks Rumsfeld is too conservative

Imagine the liberal world in which she lives,
from which Time recruits its journalists, where it takes a one-on-one
session with the Secretary of Defense to realize that maybe the
anti-terrorism policies are really being made by people who are trying to
enact the best policy.

Curry wondered: "What did you learn about
him or yourself from doing this interview?"
Tatarsky said she realized how the childhoods of
her and Rumsfeld mean they have different political outlooks: "What
did I learn about him or myself? Well about him, I mean I grew up in the
East Village in New York City so my ideas are very different from his but
I definitely got to see where he was coming from. He grew up in a little
Navy town so that definitely would influence him being pro-war so that
gave me, I understood where he was coming from."
Curry: "Uh huh. His position, which was more
conservative I take, than, than your position."
Tatarsky confirmed: "Right."
Curry: "Do you want to be a
journalist?"
Tatarsky: "I was thinking about it and I
realized I don't."

Liberal
media bias disproved by an NPR commentator's cursory database check of
ideological labeling? A "study" by Geoffrey Nunberg of Stanford
University's Center for the Study of Language and Information, first
aired in a commentary in mid-March on NPR's Fresh Air and now featured
as an article in the latest edition of American Prospect magazine, was
given credibility by CNN's Jeff Greenfield on Wednesday's Inside
Politics.

Picking up on the most misleading claim of
all, Greenfield relayed how after checking newspaper labeling of prominent
liberal and conservative politicians, Nunberg found: "It was the
liberals who were 30 percent more likely to be labeled by the media than
the conservatives."

In fact, Nunberg's "30 percent"
gap was between how the liberals were labeled 3.78 percent of the time and
the conservatives were tagged 2.89 percent of the time. If the MRC ever
did a study which found that kind of puny difference we wouldn't claim a
30 percent disparity. We'd say the media basically hardly ever do x or y.
So, if you buy Nunberg's numbers he only found that newspapers hardly
ever label anybody, not that liberals are labeled significantly more
often.

(For instance: A 1989 MRC study of the
Washington Post, New York Times, Newsweek, Time and U.S. News found that
during 1987-88 Concerned Women for America was tagged conservative
41 percent of the time, but the National Organization for Women was called
liberal just 2 percent of the time. Now that's a real disparity. For
details:http://secure.mediaresearch.org/news/mediawatch/1989/mw19890301stud.html)

Greenfield asserted on the April 17 show:
"In his best-selling book Bias, former CBS News newsman Bernard
Goldberg argues that liberal broadcasters use such labels because they
simply assume conservatives are outside the mainstream while liberals are
part of it.
"Well, in the new American Prospect
magazine, writer Geoffrey Nunberg tried to test that argument. So, he took
five leading conservatives -- Senators Trent and Jesse Helms, Attorney
General John Ashcroft, and Representatives Dick Armey and Tom DeLay. He
also took five leading liberals: Senators Barbara Boxer, Paul Wellstone,
Tom Harkin, Ted Kennedy and Representative Barney Frank.
"He ran their names through a database of
major American newspapers, most of them with liberal editorial pages, like
The New York Times and The Washington Post. What did he find? It was the
liberals who were 30 percent more likely to be labeled by the media than
the conservatives." Greenfield added: "Conservative jurist
Robert Bork was labeled slightly more often than liberal Laurence Tribe.
But liberal columnist Michael Kinsley was labeled far more often than
conservatives Bill Bennett or Reverend Jerry Falwell.

Greenfield deserves credit for not trying to
claim, as have some liberal commentators in trumpeting Nunberg's
numbers, that his study disproves liberal bias. Greenfield cautioned:
"Now, this doesn't necessarily prove that Bernard Goldberg or other
critics are wrong. The study, after all, did not focus on TV broadcasters.
And it does not disprove charges of bias in the coverage of issues or
political campaigns."

But then, Greenfield concluded by scolding
both liberals and conservatives for seeing what they want to see:
"Given the liberal editorial stance of most of the newspapers
surveyed, it does raise an interesting question about media critics, one
that knows no ideological line: Are the critics responding to what they
see and hear and read or to what they think they're hearing, seeing and
reading?"

The fact that CNN, which has never once aired
a story devoted to any of the hundreds of definitive studies produced over
the years by the Media Research Center, so eagerly jumped on Nunberg's
numbers days after they appeared in a liberal magazine, prompts me to ask:
Is CNN treating as newsworthy that which they find more agreeable over
findings they don't like?

Now, to be fair to Greenfield, in interviewing
Goldberg on his since-cancelled Greenfield at Large program a few months
ago, he did cite the MRC's documentation of bias. And Greenfield's
"at large" role now, in which he offers commentary on CNN's
American Morning and Inside Politics, allows him to pick up on off-beat
topics which previously would not have necessarily received air time. I
just hope that he will show an equal interest in the near future in the
MRC's ongoing documentation of liberal bias.

As for the accuracy of Nunberg's numbers, I
hardly know where to begin. While it is possible that the media's
labeling skew has declined over time, my bottom line: Since Nunberg really
didn't do a study which would meet any basic criteria for thoroughness,
I don't take his numbers very seriously, especially since they conflict
with much more solid studies conducted over the years by the MRC and the
numerous anecdotes recounted by the MRC of labeling disparities in recent
years between two comparable events, groups or politicians.

Space does not permit a total refutation of
all the problems I see in Nunberg's approach, but I'll offer a few
followed by some labeling numbers and examples documented by the MRC:

-- Nunberg's March 19 NPR commentary and May
American Prospect article were aimed as discrediting Bernard Goldberg's
claim that the TV networks are more likely to label a conservative than a
liberal. Nunberg countered that not with anything about the networks, but
with numbers from dozens of newspapers.

-- He used the Dialog database to find the
names and labels, but he didn't check each one as the MRC always does to
ensure accuracy. He explained: "I examined 100 citations by hand, by
taking the first 25 hits for each of Lott, Boxer, Wellstone and DeLay. I
found 12 examples in this set that could not be described as ascriptions
of political bias. These were evenly balanced between conservatives and
liberals. Or to put it another way, 88 percent of the hits did in fact
involve ascriptions of political labels."

Doing a proper study means going through
thousands of hits to categorize each one so references to Paul
Wellstone's "liberal use of sugar on his cereal," are not
counted. That's a very time-consuming process -- which is why we
haven't quickly countered Nunberg with a fresh study which would meet
our standards.

-- Each hit must be checked for duplication
since databases like Nexis and Dialog often include the same story
multiple times. His overall numbers included dozens of smaller papers
which may in itself change the numbers because, for instance, he probably
counted a single AP story many times and the wire services run a lot of
stories with lists of names of officials for or against an issue, not a
place where you'd add a label.

-- His numbers are impacted by how his date
ranges vary by publication.

-- Some of the prominent names he picked are
for people who have a title a reporter would be more likely to use, such
as "Senate Majority Leader."

> Some, just some, of the labeling studies
published over he years in the MRC's old MediaWatch newsletter,
including ones covering the TV networks, as collated for me by the MRC's
Tim Jones:

-- MediaWatch selected a broad sample
of smaller groups in specific issue areas, surveying every news story on
14 liberal groups and seven conservative ones from 1988, 1989, and 1990 in
the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and Washington Post.
Analysts found 29 labels in 1,182 stories on liberal groups (2.5 percent),
and 65 labels in 179 stories on conservative groups (36.3 percent), a
ratio of 14 to one. For details:http://secure.mediaresearch.org/news/mediawatch/1991/mw19910501stud.html

-- MediaWatch analysts compared media
coverage of the primaries in 1992 with those in 1996. Analysts reviewed
evening news coverage of the four networks (ABC's World News Tonight,
CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, and CNN's The World Today
and in 1992 World News or Prime News) for 19 days, starting with the
Tuesday before the New Hampshire primary.
The study found the Democratic candidates or
their supporters were labeled "liberal" only four times, none
suggesting extremism. In 1996, GOP candidates or their supporters were
labeled 73 times, 45 of the labels suggesting extremism. Details:http://secure.mediaresearch.org/news/mediawatch/1996/mw19960301stud.html

-- To analyze the media's use of labels to
describe the political parties, MediaWatch analysts used the Nexis
news data retrieval system to search for the word "extreme"
within 25 words of "Republican" or "Democrat" in the
three news magazines (Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World
Report) and USA Today from January 1, 1993 to May 31, 1996.
Analysts discovered reporters did not use many
extremist labels in 1993 and 1994 -- 41 -- but 26 of those were applied to
Republicans, compared to ten mentions of dual extremes and only five for
the Democrats who ruled both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. But in the first
17 months of GOP control, Republicans were described as
"extreme" in 123 stories, while only 15 found
"extremes" on both sides. Just two mentioned "extreme"
Democrats.
For details: http://secure.mediaresearch.org/news/mediawatch/1996/mw19960601stud.html

-- MediaWatch analysts used the Nexis
news data retrieval system to locate every news story in 1995 and 1996 on
ten liberal environmental groups, and compared that to conservative groups
in The New York Times, USA Today, and The Washington Post.
The story remains the same: in 1,089 news stories, liberal environmental
groups were described as liberal in only five stories (or 0.5 percent).
By contrast, the largest "free-market
environmentalist" think tank, the Competitive Enterprise Institute
drew eight "conservative" labels in 29 stories (28 percent). For
details:http://secure.mediaresearch.org/news/mediawatch/1997/mw19971201stud.html

-- As abortion advocates celebrated the 25th
anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion, MediaWatch
analysts explored the labeling of groups active in the abortion
debate. Using the Nexis news data retrieval system, analysts located every
news story in 1995 and 1996 on four pro-life groups, and compared them to
stories on four abortion advocacy groups in The New York Times, USA
Today, and The Washington Post. In 1,050 news stories, the
pro-life groups were described as "conservative" or some variant
in 178 out of 378 news stories (47 percent), while abortion advocates were
labeled "liberal" or a similar term in only 19 of 682 stories
(2.8 percent). For details:http://secure.mediaresearch.org/news/mediawatch/1998/mw19980101stud.html

-- A classic contrast occurred between how
ABC, CBS and NBC labeled Dick Cheney in 2000 versus Al Gore in 1992. As
recounted in a July 2000 Media Reality Check:

Cheney earned a lifetime 91 percent from the American Conservative
Union while Gore was at the opposite end of the spectrum at 15 percent.

Still, the night Gore was announced in 1992, CBS reporter Richard
Threlkeld claimed: "Both Gore and Clinton are centrist, some would
say conservative Democrats, and white and male." Tom Brokaw announced
on NBC: "Today, Bill Clinton broke the rules. He chose someone from
the same gene pool: a fellow moderate Southerner of the same generation,
Senator Al Gore of Tennessee." During the convention, CBS's Susan
Spencer found delegates willing to accept "such a conservative pair
in hopes of winning."

Compare that to how Cheney was described the day Bush made his
selection official, July 25:

-- ABC: Linda Douglass referred to him as one of the "most
conservative members" of Congress who had "a very conservative
voting record." George Stephanopoulos dubbed him a "very
hardline conservative."